Gee, a Creationist doing the Gish Gallop with links to all the usual IDiot / YECkery sites.

How clever.

--------------"Science is what got us to the humble place we’re at, and what hard-won progress we might realize comes from science, with ID completely flaccid, religious apologetics bitching from the sidelines." - Eigenstate at UD

Of course here's where the IDiots start squirming and claiming "it's not new information, it's just different information!"

--------------"Science is what got us to the humble place we’re at, and what hard-won progress we might realize comes from science, with ID completely flaccid, religious apologetics bitching from the sidelines." - Eigenstate at UD

There's nothing to refute. It's just one more IDiot claiming abiogenesis is impossible, claiming to have proved a negative.

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Your list of scientific papers does not impress me in the slightest.

Of course not since you didn't read them and wouldn't understand them if you did.

--------------"Science is what got us to the humble place we’re at, and what hard-won progress we might realize comes from science, with ID completely flaccid, religious apologetics bitching from the sidelines." - Eigenstate at UD

1. You have not read my answer. It was about the signal transduction pathway in photoreceptor cells.

Yeah, we know. "The (insert body part here) is SOOOOO COMPLEX it just couldn't have evolved! Therefore GODDIDIT!!"

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2. Your example does not refute my claim, since its about another organism, not the human eye.

You bluster doesn't support your claim that human eye/brain evolution is impossible.

--------------"Science is what got us to the humble place we’re at, and what hard-won progress we might realize comes from science, with ID completely flaccid, religious apologetics bitching from the sidelines." - Eigenstate at UD

Replying to the latest Creationist chewtoy seeker after Truth, with relevant context restored as needed

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Ah, here it comes. The demand for INFINITE DETAIL while providing exactly ZERO of his own.

Well, isnt that a prediction of the ToE, that these transitional fossils should be encountered ?

No. What ToE predicts is that "these transitional fossils" actually did exist at some time in the past. ToE is silent on the question of whether or not "these transitional fossils" should still exist in the present day; it neither mandates their present-day existence, nor forbids their present-day existence.

So the ToE would be making absolute claims, and be true, no matter if there is evidence to support its assertions, or not...

You have chosen to respond to what I wrote—that being, the ToE does not mandate that transitional fossils must necessarily survive to the present day—as if I had actually said something akin to the ToE does not require any evidence at all. Until such time as you elect to reply to what I wrote, rather than to what you imagine I wrote, I see no reason to engage with you further on this point.

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We also know from broad and repeated experience that intelligent agents can and do produce information-rich systems…

We "know from broad and repeated experience" that human agents "can and do produce information-rich systems", yes. To the best of my knowledge, we have no experience whatsoever of "information-rich systems" being produced by "intelligent agents" other than humans. Perhaps you'd care to cite some evidence of "information-rich systems" being produced by "intelligent agents" other than humans?

Neither do we have experience that non - intelligence has EVER produced codified information...

That's nice. It doesn't happen to be the "evidence of 'information-rich systems' being produced by 'intelligent agents' other than humans" I asked you for, but it's nice.

This is a bog-standard Creationist talking point. In order to give Otangelo an opportunity to demonstrate that he actually comprehends this talking point, and isn't just mindlessly repeating it like a tape recorder, I do have a question.

What does "new information" look like? Given an arbitrary string of nucleotides, and a mutation which alters that string of nucleotides, how can you tell whether or not the post-mutation version of that string contains any "new" information?

You have chosen to respond to what I wrote—that being, the ToE does not mandate that transitional fossils must necessarily survive to the present day—as if I had actually said something akin to the ToE does not require any evidence at all. Until such time as you elect to reply to what I wrote, rather than to what you imagine I wrote,I see no reason to engage with you further on this point.

Sorry, i do not understand your replies. What do you mean with :

ToE does not mandate that transitional fossils must necessarily survive to the present day ???

If there are no transitional fossils in the fossil record, how would you confirm the ToE in regard of paleontology ?

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That's nice. It doesn't happen to be the "evidence of 'information-rich systems' being produced by 'intelligent agents' other than humans" I asked you for, but it's nice.

Once more your sentence is hard to understand. There is no reason to assume that humans are the only beings that can have intelligent thoughts. Complex, specified, coded information rich, interdependent and irreducible complex systems are best explained through a intelligent designer. Period.

The people who designed those bullshit meaningless buzz terms to hang on biological forms may be intelligent but they certainly aren't very honest.

--------------"Science is what got us to the humble place we’re at, and what hard-won progress we might realize comes from science, with ID completely flaccid, religious apologetics bitching from the sidelines." - Eigenstate at UD

What does "new information" look like? Given an arbitrary string of nucleotides, and a mutation which alters that string of nucleotides, how can you tell whether or not the post-mutation version of that string contains any "new" information?

Few of the many possible polypeptide chains will be useful to Cells Paul Davies puts it more graphically: ‘Making a protein simply by injecting energy is rather like exploding a stick of dynamite under a pile of bricks and expecting it to form a house. You may liberate enough energy to raise the bricks, but without coupling the energy to the bricks in a controlled and ordered way, there is little hope of producing anything other than a chaotic mess.’ It is one thing to produce bricks; it is an entirely different thing to organize the building of a house or factory. If you had to, you could build a house using stones that you found lying around, in all the shapes and sizes in which they came due to natural causes. However, the organization of the building requires something that is not contained in the stones. It requires the intelligence of the architect and the skill of the builder. It is the same with the building blocks of life. Blind chance just will not do the job of putting them together in a specific way. Organic chemist and molecular biologist A.G. Cairns-Smith puts it this way: ‘Blind chance… is very limited… he can produce exceedingly easily the equivalent of letters and small words, but he becomes very quickly incompetent as the amount of organization increases. Very soon indeed long waiting periods and massive material resources become irrelevant.’

Bruce Alberts writes in Molecular biology of the cell :

Since each of the 20 amino acids is chemically distinct and each can, in principle, occur at any position in a protein chain, there are 20 x 20 x 20 x 20 = 160,000 different possible polypeptide chains four amino acids long, or 20n different possible polypeptide chains n amino acids long. For a typical protein length of about 300 amino acids, a cell could theoretically make more than 10^390 different pollpeptide chains. This is such an enormous number that to produce just one molecule of each kind would require many more atoms than exist in the universe. Only a very small fraction of this vast set of conceivable polypeptide chains would adopt a single, stable three-dimensional conformation-by some estimates, less than one in a billion. And yet the vast majority of proteins present in cells adopt unique and stable conformations. How is this possible?

The complexity of living organisms is staggering, and it is quite sobering to note that we currently lack even the tiniest hint of what the function might be for more than 10,000 of the proteins that have thus far been identified in the human genome. There are certainly enormous challenges ahead for the next generation of cell biologists, with no shortage of fascinating mysteries to solve.

Now comes Alberts striking explanation of how the right sequence arised :

The answer Iies in natural selection. A protein with an unpredictably variable structure and biochemical activity is unlikely to help the survival of a cell that contains it. Suchproteins would therefore have been eliminated by natural selection through the enormously long trial-and-error process that underlies biological evolution. Because evolution has selected for protein function in living organisms, the amino acid sequence of most present-day proteins is such that a single conformation is extremely stable. In addition, this conformation has its chemical properties finely tuned to enable the protein to perform a particular catalltic or structural function in the cell. Proteins are so precisely built that the change of even a few atoms in one amino acid can sometimes disrupt the structure of the whole molecule so severelv that all function is lost.

Proteins are not rigid lumps of material. They often have precisely engineered moving parts whose mechanical actions are coupled to chemical events. It is this coupling of chemistry and movement that gives proteins the extraordinary capabilities that underlie the dynamic processes in living cells

Now think for a moment . It seems that natural selection is the key answer to any phenomena in biology, where there is no scientific evidence to make a empricial claim. Much has been written about the fact that natural selection cannot produce coded information. Alberts short explanation is a prima facie example about how main stream sciencists make without hesitation " just so " claims without being able to provide a shred of evidence, just in order to mantain a paradigm on which the scientific establishment relies, where evolution is THE answer to almost every biochemical phenomena. Fact is that precision, coded information, stability, interdependence and irreducible complexity etc. are products of intelligent minds. The author seems also to forget that natural selection cannot occur before the first living cell replicates. Several hundred proteins had to be already in place and fully operating in order to make even the simplest life possible

Since each of the 20 amino acids is chemically distinct and each can, in principle, occur at any position in a protein chain, there are 20 x 20 x 20 x 20 = 160,000 different possible polypeptide chains four amino acids long, or 20n different possible polypeptide chains n amino acids long. For a typical protein length of about 300 amino acids, a cell could theoretically make more than 10^390 different pollpeptide chains. This is such an enormous number that to produce just one molecule of each kind would require many more atoms than exist in the universe. Only a very small fraction of this vast set of conceivable polypeptide chains would adopt a single, stable three-dimensional conformation-by some estimates, less than one in a billion. And yet the vast majority of proteins present in cells adopt unique and stable conformations. How is this possible?

Because, dummy, the proteins and such in YOUR body have been changing and forming correctly (because incorrectly formed proteins means the organism died) over the last billion years.

It's YOU guys who do "poof" it appears. Not evolutionary theory. Get it straight. Evolution isn't what you think it is.

BTW: Did you answer my questions? I doubt it.

--------------Ignored by those who can't provide evidence for their claims.

Those things can be produced by intelligent minds but they don't have to be. They can also be produced by non-intelligent iterative processes using feedback and heritability, exactly how evolution proceeds. This has been demonstrated hundreds of times over with the workings of genetic algorithms.

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The author seems also to forget that natural selection cannot occur before the first living cell replicates. Several hundred proteins had to be already in place and fully operating in order to make even the simplest life possible

FAIL again. Evolution begins as soon as you have imperfect self replicators competing for resources. Even the simplest pre-biotic self-replicating molecules would experience selection pressures.

--------------"Science is what got us to the humble place we’re at, and what hard-won progress we might realize comes from science, with ID completely flaccid, religious apologetics bitching from the sidelines." - Eigenstate at UD

The author seems also to forget that natural selection cannot occur before the first living cell replicates. Several hundred proteins had to be already in place and fully operating in order to make even the simplest life possible

FAIL again. Evolution begins as soon as you have imperfect self replicators competing for resources. Even the simplest pre-biotic self-replicating molecules would experience selection pressures.

Based on the conjoint analysis of several computational and experimental strategies designed to define the minimal set of protein-coding genes that are necessary to maintain a functional bacterial cell, we propose a minimal gene set composed of 206 genes. Such a gene set will be able to sustain the mainvital functions of a hypothetical simplest bacterial cell with the following features.

(i) A virtually complete DNA replication machinery, composed of one nucleoid DNA binding protein, SSB, DNA helicase, primase, gyrase, polymerase III, and ligase. No initiation and recruiting proteins seem to be essential, and the DNA gyrase is the only topoisomerase included, which should performboth replication and chromosome segregation functions.

(ii) A very rudimentary system for DNA repair, including only one endonuclease, one exonuclease, and a uracyl-DNA glycosylase.

(iii) A virtually complete transcriptional machinery, including the three subunits of the RNA polymerase, a factor, an RNA helicase, and four transcriptional factors (with elongation, antitermination, and transcription-translation coupling functions). Regulation of transcription does not appear to be essential in bacteria with reduced genomes, and therefore the minimal gene set does not contain any transcriptional regulators.

(iv) A nearly complete translational system. It contains the 20 aminoacyl-tRNA synthases, a methionyl-tRNA formyltransferase, five enzymes involved in tRNA maturation and modification, 50 ribosomal proteins (31 proteins for the large ribosomal subunit and 19 proteins for the small one), six proteins necessary for ribosome function and maturation (four of which are GTP binding proteins whose specific function is not well known), 12 translation factors, and 2 RNases involved in RNA degradation.

(v) Protein-processing, -folding, secretion, and degradation functions are performed by at least three proteins for posttranslational modification, two molecular chaperone systems (GroEL/S and DnaK/DnaJ/GrpE), six components of the translocase machinery (including the signal recognition particle, its receptor, the three essential components of the translocase channel, and a signal peptidase), one endopeptidase, and two proteases.

(vi) Cell division can be driven by FtsZ only, considering that, in a protected environment, the cell wall might not be necessary for cellular structure.

(vii) A basic substrate transport machinery cannot be clearly defined, based on our current knowledge. Although it appears that several cation and ABC transporters are always present in all analyzed bacteria, we have included in the minimal set only a PTS for glucose transport and a phosphate transporter. Further analysis should be performed to define a more complete set of transporters.

(viii) The energetic metabolism is based on ATP synthesis by glycolytic substrate-level phosphorylation.

(ix) The nonoxidative branch of the pentose pathway contains three enzymes (ribulose-phosphate epimerase, ribosephosphate isomerase, and transketolase), allowing the synthesis of pentoses (PRPP) from trioses or hexoses.

(x) No biosynthetic pathways for amino acids, since we suppose that they can be provided by the environment.

(xi) Lipid biosynthesis is reduced to the biosynthesis of phosphatidylethanolamine from the glycolytic intermediate dihydroxyacetone phosphate and activated fatty acids provided by the environment.

(xii) Nucleotide biosynthesis proceeds through the salvage pathways, from PRPP and the free bases adenine, guanine, and uracil, which are obtained from the environment.

--------------"Science is what got us to the humble place we’re at, and what hard-won progress we might realize comes from science, with ID completely flaccid, religious apologetics bitching from the sidelines." - Eigenstate at UD

--------------"Science is what got us to the humble place we’re at, and what hard-won progress we might realize comes from science, with ID completely flaccid, religious apologetics bitching from the sidelines." - Eigenstate at UD

--------------"But it's disturbing to think someone actually thinks creationism -- having put it's hand on the hot stove every day for the last 400 years -- will get a different result tomorrow." -- midwifetoad

You have chosen to respond to what I wrote—that being, the ToE does not mandate that transitional fossils must necessarily survive to the present day—as if I had actually said something akin to the ToE does not require any evidence at all. Until such time as you elect to reply to what I wrote, rather than to what you imagine I wrote,I see no reason to engage with you further on this point.

Sorry, i do not understand your replies. What do you mean with :

ToE does not mandate that transitional fossils must necessarily survive to the present day ???

I meant exactly what I said: The theory of evolution does not mandate that any particular fossil (transitional or otherwise) must necessarily survive to the present day. This is because the theory of evolution does not mandate that any particular fossil be immune to physical damage. A fossil which is struck by lightning can end up shattered into zillions of unrecognizable bits; a fossil which is exposed to intense heat (such as the heat from a lightning-ignited forest fire, or from a volcanic lava flow) can end up burned or melted beyond recognition; a fossil which is subjected to intense pressure (such as from the impact of a heavy falling object) can end up crushed/shattered beyond recognition; and so on.

Of course, any fossil which has been identified by a human investigator is a fossil which has not been damaged beyond recognition. Since some fossils are sufficiently intact to be recognized as fossils, it's clear that the percentage of fossils which do get damaged beyond recognition must be something less than 100%. And those fossils which actually are found & identified in the fossil record, are among the less-than-100% of fossils which manage to avoid getting damaged beyond recognition by fire, pressure, lightning, etc.

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If there are no transitional fossils in the fossil record, how would you confirm the ToE in regard of paleontology?

Dunno. [shrug] Fortunately, the fossil record here in the RealWorld does contain various transitional fossils, so your question doesn't arise.

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That's nice. It doesn't happen to be the "evidence of 'information-rich systems' being produced by 'intelligent agents' other than humans" I asked you for, but it's nice.

Once more your sentence is hard to understand. There is no reason to assume that humans are the only beings that can have intelligent thoughts.

You said it yourself:

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We also know from broad and repeated experience that intelligent agents can and do produce information-rich systems…

You argued, on the basis of "broad and repeated experience", that it's reasonable to presume that "intelligent agents… produce information-rich systems". I responded by pointing out that "broad and repeated experience" tells us that "information-rich systems" are not produced by nonspecific, vaguely-defined "intelligent agents" but, rather, by human beings. To the best of my knowledge, we do not have "broad and repeated experience" of "information-rich systems" created by "intelligent agents" other than human beings. More strongly: To the best of my knowledge, we have no experience whatsoever of "information-rich systems" created by "intelligent agents" other than human beings.

If you now want to argue that "information-rich systems" can be created by "agents" other than those (human) agents of which we do have "broad and repeated experience", that's cool—but in that case, you've just abandoned your own argument.

Nucleotides are some of the largest monomers that have to be made by the cell and understandably their synthesis involves many steps and large amounts of energy.Biosynthesis of nucleotides is under tight regulatory control in the cell. Organisms need to make just the right amount of each base; if too much is made, energy is wasted, if too little, DNA replication and cellular metabolism come to a halt. Also, the cell is sensitive to the presence of any premade nucleotides in its environment and will down regulate their de novo synthesis pathways in favor of using what is already present in the surroundings. Bacteria are capable of interconverting purines (adenine and guanine) and interconverting pyrimidines (thymidine, cytidine and uracil). If a growth medium provides a purine and a pyrimidine, many microbes are capable of synthesizing the other needed nucleotides from them.

All nucleotides contain a ribose sugar and phosphate that form the backbone of DNA and RNA. These are synthesized from ribose 5-phosphate, a central metabolite of the pentose phosphate pathway.

In Explaining the Cambrian Explosion, Has the TalkOrigins Archive Resolved Darwin’s Dilemma? – JonathanM – May 2012Excerpt: it is the pattern of morphological disparity preceding diversity that is fundamentally at odds with the neo-Darwinian scenario of gradualism. All of the major differences (i.e. the higher taxonomic categories such as phyla) appear first in the fossil record and then the lesser taxonomic categories such as classes, orders, families, genera and species appear later. On the Darwinian view, one would expect to see all of the major differences in body plan appear only after numerous small-scale speciation events. But this is not what we observe.http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....5....71.html

Challenging Fossil of a Little Fish – 2000“In Chen’s view, his evidence supports a history of life that runs opposite to the standard evolutionary tree diagrams, a progression he calls top-down evolution.”Jun-Yuan Chen is professor at the Nanjing Institute of Paleontology and Geologyhttp://www.fredheeren.com/boston.....ton.htm

Scientific study turns understanding about evolution on its head – July 30, 2013Excerpt: evolutionary biologists,,, looked at nearly one hundred fossil groups to test the notion that it takes groups of animals many millions of years to reach their maximum diversity of form.Contrary to popular belief, not all animal groups continued to evolve fundamentally new morphologies through time. The majority actually achieved their greatest diversity of form (disparity) relatively early in their histories.,,,Dr Matthew Wills said: “This pattern, known as ‘early high disparity’, turns the traditional V-shaped cone model of evolution on its head. What is equally surprising in our findings is that groups of animals are likely to show early-high disparity regardless of when they originated over the last half a billion years. This isn’t a phenomenon particularly associated with the first radiation of animals (in the Cambrian Explosion), or periods in the immediate wake of mass extinctions.”,,,Author Martin Hughes, continued: “Our work implies that there must be constraints on the range of forms within animal groups, and that these limits are often hit relatively early on.Co-author Dr Sylvain Gerber, added: “A key question now is what prevents groups from generating fundamentally new forms later on in their evolution.,,,http://phys.org/news....on.html

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Do you, or do you not, have evidence of "information-rich systems" being produced by "intelligent agents" other than human beings?

Once its granted that non-intelligence mechanisms are unable to create information-rich systems, your question is moot.

We know that intelligence outside of the human realm is possible. We have lots and lots of evidence of dualism, and out-of the body experiences, and near death experiences, which indicate that intelligence can exist without being bond to the physical body.